Where we differ. Maybe, just maybe, we do some things better in Oz...
A snapshot of the scene just after Sarah Palin had finished her big address to the Republican National Convention was worth more votes than anything she had just said.
After she gave her spirited speech accepting the Republican nomination for the US vice-presidency, her family joined Palin on stage and handed over her youngest child, four-month-old Trig.
When Trig was born in April, Palin said that she "initially felt sad" when doctors had diagnosed the boy in her womb as a Down syndrome child.
"When we first heard, it was kind of confusing," she said. "It was very, very challenging. [But now,] it just feels like he fits perfectly. He is supposed to be here with us."
The 44-year-old Governor of the state of Alaska later added: "We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed."
As she embraced Trig on stage in the full glare of national attention, there was no stronger way of sending the message - this is a candidate who is deeply pro-life. That picture was worth millions of votes.
The issue of abortion is central to US politics. It was enough to swing the 2004 presidential election for George Bush. Astonishingly, Bush won a million more Catholic votes than his opponent, the Catholic candidate John Kerry, largely because Bush is staunchly anti-abortion and Kerry was not.
According to a poll by Time magazine in July, 20 per cent of likely voters said they would only vote for a candidate whose view was the same as theirs on abortion. For these people, abortion is the only issue. In the 2004 presidential election some 62 million people voted. If the same number of people vote in the November presidential poll, 12 million will decide their vote on the abortion issue. These very strongly committed "abortion voters" are split down the middle, roughly half in favour of legalised abortion and half opposed.
Until the announcement of Palin's candidacy, there was nowhere for a passionate anti-abortion voter to go. The Democrats' Barack Obama and his vice-presidential candidate, Joe Biden, are both in favour of the status quo, legal abortion on demand.
And the Republican candidate for president, John McCain, has a history of being equivocal in his anti-abortion position. For America's social conservatives, this was a source of deep disquiet. Many were planning to respond by staying home. Much of the Republican base, in other words, was on strike. Sarah Palin has changed that. She has given millions of anti-abortion voters a reason to turn out on November 4.
Some anti-abortion activists believe that they need only one more sympathetic judge on the Supreme Court to be able to reverse the historic 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalised abortion. And the Supreme Court judges are appointed by the president, albeit subject to confirmation by Congress. With Palin in the White House alongside McCain, the pro-life movement considers that its great goal may be tantalisingly close to becoming achievable.
Australian abortion politics exist in a parallel universe. A Tasmanian Liberal, Senator Guy Barnett, is sponsoring a motion that would end Medicare funding for abortions carried out between the 14th and 26th weeks of pregnancy. It is expected to be put to a vote in the next couple of weeks.
This has the potential to ignite a great political conflagration as the pro-life and pro-choice lobbies fire up. Abortion remains one of the most emotionally powerful issues in human affairs. But are the Australian political parties gearing up for a mighty struggle on this?
Not a bit of it. The Labor and Liberal parties have both decided that they will not put a party position on this. Both parties will allow their members a conscience vote. There are to be no party positions; only personal ones.
This is the standard approach in the Australian system to difficult matters of reproductive morality. It is one of the starkest differences between the US and Australian systems. Passions over abortion are stepped down in Australia even as they are stepped up in America, defused here even as they become more highly charged there.
The chief reason is that the parties know that this is an issue that can tear them apart, both of them. For instance, the Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson, and the deputy leader, Julie Bishop, have diametrically opposed positions on another abortion-related measure - whether Australian foreign aid should be made available to countries so that they can provide abortion advice.
Such funding is now banned as a result of a deal between John Howard, who wanted the Senate to agree to the privatisation of Telstra, and the now-retired Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine, who wanted the abortion advice funding cut off. Both got their way. The Rudd Government is reviewing the policy. Nelson wants the ban kept in place; Bishop wants it scrapped.
The party chiefs allow conscience votes in order to avoid bitter division. Does this short-change Australian democracy? In the last parliamentary vote on an abortion issue, members and senators voted in 2006 on whether to retain the health minister's power of veto over the abortion drug RU-486. In a conscience vote, 65 per cent of members voted to liberalise supply of the drug, and in the Senate 62 per cent supported liberalisation. Interestingly, this is broadly the level of polled community support for legalised abortion on demand.
So we get a broadly representative outcome, but without the bitter divisiveness. In a conversation with the conservative US political philosopher Francis Fukuyama last year, he asked what the Australian political position was on embryonic stem cell research. I told him that it had been approved by the Parliament but on a conscience vote, not on party lines. It was the way Australia handled all such issues. There had been impassioned speeches, but no great partisan clash. There was a long pause before he replied: "It must be nice to live in a country like that."
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.
Comments
That is what I would consider an oxymoron in this day and age. :)
it bugged the hell out of me
pretty freakin low when you have to trot out your 4 month year old baby with Down's for a damn photo op.
is there nothing she/they won't do?
clearly not
my mother works with kids with mental and physical disabilities
i've been around Down's kids my whole life
and let me tell you that most of these parents split up - because the hardships - economically, mentally, and physically - were simply insurmountable
that this PERSON, who shows an utter lack of awareness of any socio-economic intricacies beyond those of her immediate sphere, brought the issue of women's reproductive rights down to such a shallow level is irresponsible and frankly, unconscionable
this woman is monstrously unsuited to be Vice-President of anything bigger than a hunting lodge
"It must be nice to live in a country like that."
I have to agree.
Some things just boggle my mind. The hypocrisy of claiming to be pro-life yet supporting an unjust war makes my mind whirl in confusion.
You can bet that those same Repubs who support Governor Palin's daughter's decision (as though it were any of their business anyway) to keep and raise her child would also condemn and stigmatize another 17-year-old making the same choice if she went on welfare. Again, the hypocrisy stinks.
but as you said, of course she is